This article, written by Tom Carter, was originally published in Central City Extra's November 2015 issue (pdf). You can find the newspaper distributed around area cafes, nonprofits, City Hall offices, SROs and other residences – and in the periodicals section on the fifth floor of the Main Library.
Mark Hedin, a leading Central City Extra reporter since the newspaper began in 2000 who also serves as its distributor, was clubbed from behind on his rounds, stemming from a road rage incident minutes before.
Hedin was struck on Oct. 8th after crossing O’Farrell Street carrying bundles of Extras to deliver to several of the 200-some distribution points in the Tenderloin.
He collapsed unconscious on the sidewalk, and "the next thing I know, I wake up in an ambulance taking me to S.F. General,” Hedin, 56, said. The attack put Hedin into critical condition. He was in S.F. General’s intensive care unit for three days with a traumatic brain injury and nose and skull fractures from his fall, the result of being hit with a blunt object allegedly wielded by the man he'd previously had words with.
Days later, suspect Darryl Bolden, 37, of San Francisco was arrested, Tenderloin police said. He was charged with battery with serious injury, and is scheduled to appear in court the day before Thanksgiving.
The incident started when Hedin had driven his car down Jones Street at about 5:15 pm with a load of Extras in the backseat. He started to back into a tight parking spot in the 500 block.
“I pride myself in being able to [negotiate] tight spots, but [to inch in], you have to tap the car in front and the one in back,” Hedin said.
In back was a brown Mercedes-Benz. When Hedin’s car gently tapped it, its only occupant, in the driver’s seat, went “crazy,” Hedin recalls. Seeing a larger space up the street, Hedin drove off and parked there. A 6-foot-4 man with dreadlocks, between 35 and 40, “jumped out” with a camera to take pictures of Hedin’s license plates.
"'I don’t see any damage here,’” Hedin, a wiry 6-2, said he told the man, in the looking at where the cars had touched. “‘That’s why they call them bumpers.’”
“‘I got the whiplash,’” Hedin said the man replied.
“I didn’t respond and I went about my business” distributing papers, Hedin said. He headed up Jones Street, then back to the car and across Jones to the Coast Hotel and Joey’s Laundromat on O’Farrell. “When I came back for more papers, he wanted to see some ID. I ignored him. There was nothing going on here.”
Hedin crossed the street with a bundle of papers in each hand, en route to the San Francisco Senior Center, O’Farrell Towers and the Winton Hotel. Then the lights went out.
“I woke up in an ambulance, confused,” he said, with no idea what had happened or how long he had been out.
Sgt. Alex Rodatos of SFPD's Tenderloin Station visited the crime scene after officers found Hedin unconscious and the Mercedes gone. Rodatos appeared at Hedin’s hospital bedside that night with six mugshots to look at.
But the former Chronicle copy editor didn’t recognize anyone. Rodatos also told Hedin that the police had a street surveillance video of the incident, but that he couldn’t view it—in case he has to testify in court, because it could affect his recollection.
“I’d like to see that video,” Hedin said. “The tip of my spine still hurts, and I want to see how I fell.”
An SFGate report called it a “road-rage fight”over a “fender-bender”—“a minor accident with the driver of a late 1990s Mercedes-Benz,” it said, quoting police.
The hospital released Hedin on Oct. 11th, gave him back the two bundles of Extras he was carrying and cautioned him to limit the time he spent watching TV or using his cell phone, computer or reading.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to me,” Hedin said recently, still in some pain and walking gingerly. “I have always liked the neighborhood. I get around it and see a lot of familiar faces. People thank me for the papers.”
Hedin, also a bass player in several bands and a substitute teacher for the San Francisco Unified School District, figures being laid up will have cost him at least a month of work.
But despite still being wobbly, not even two weeks later, he helped get the rest of the October edition distributed.
